Myths About Growing Garlic in Scotland

“Plant garlic on the shortest day and harvest on the longest”

The rhyme is a reasonable mnemonic for the south of England and a poor guide for Scotland. The advice is to plant garlic in autumn or early winter for most varieties, with an earlier window of September to November for cooler regions. Waiting until the shortest day, 21 December, puts cloves into ground that is already cold and wet, and the roots have almost no time to establish before hard frosts arrive.

What to do: Plant garlic in October or early November in most of Scotland, and September in exposed or upland sites. The cloves need a cold spell to trigger bulb formation, which a Scottish winter will certainly provide, but they need roots first or they sit and rot.

In Scotland: This is the gardening myth that costs Scottish growers a garlic crop more often than any other. December-planted cloves in cold wet ground simply fail to establish, and a row of empty spaces in spring is the bill for trusting the rhyme.

“Elephant garlic is just a big garlic — plant it the same way”

Elephant garlic is a leek, not a garlic, more closely related to leeks, and the growing advice is different: it needs a longer season, wider spacing and does not form the tight multi-clove bulb of true garlic. The flavour is milder and storage life shorter.

Our read The name is misleading and the gardening consequences are real. Treating it as garlic means planting too late, spacing too close, and expecting it to store over winter like garlic, all of which it does badly.

What to do: Treat elephant garlic like a large leek: plant in spring in colder areas, space at 20-30cm rather than 15, and use it fresh rather than relying on it for winter storage.

In Scotland: Spring planting is the safer bet here. A Scottish winter is harder on elephant garlic than on true garlic, and an October planting that would suit a hardneck may fail on this one.

“Buy a bulb from the supermarket and plant the cloves — garlic is garlic”

Supermarket garlic is typically a softneck variety bred for warm, dry climates and long storage, not for growing in a Scottish garden. Buying named varieties from a seed supplier rather than splitting a supermarket bulb is the better route. The crop you get from a supermarket clove is usually smaller, more disease-prone and less reliable.

What to do: Buy from a seed supplier and choose a variety suited to the UK. Hardneck types like Early Purple Wight or Solent Wight perform better in cooler, wetter conditions than the softneck types sold in shops.

In Scotland: Softneck garlic from a supermarket was grown in a warm, dry climate and has no tolerance for a wet Scottish winter. Hardnecks bred for the UK are what you want.

“Garlic is garlic — the type you buy doesn't really matter”

Hardneck and softneck garlic are different crops with different habits, different storage lives and different suitability for a given climate. Hardneck varieties produce a flower stalk, have fewer but larger cloves per bulb, and do not store as long. Softnecks store for months, produce more cloves and rarely bolt. Choosing the wrong one for your purpose is a whole season's mistake.

What to do: Grow hardnecks if you want scapes and larger individual cloves, and accept they will not store into spring. Grow softnecks for the longest storage and the classic supermarket look, but expect smaller bulbs in a cool wet year.

In Scotland: Hardnecks are generally the safer bet here. They are hardier, handle wet better, and the shorter storage life matters less when the alternative is a softneck that did not size up.